


I Think I Really Only Cried Just Once

by nik_knows_nothing



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Coping, F/M, Gen, MJ is a dork, Peter Parker is a dork, Post-Endgame, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Spider-Man: Far From Home (Movie), but they're getting there, the kids aren't alright
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:48:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21735547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nik_knows_nothing/pseuds/nik_knows_nothing
Summary: Life moves on, after the snap.Most of the time, it's not that big of a thing.And then some of the time, you have a nervous breakdown over a "missing dog" poster while standing in an empty hallway with the boy who might be your crush and might also be Spider-Man.No big deal.MJ's coping.
Relationships: Michelle Jones/Peter Parker
Comments: 18
Kudos: 177





	I Think I Really Only Cried Just Once

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from fun.'s "Walking the Dog"

Honestly, it's not like MJ _dislikes_ Brad.

Really, it isn't that.

It's just that it all feels so _weird._

Because it's not like she remembers the five years of nothingness _—_ _the Blip,_ people are calling it, because it's easier to laugh at something when it's got a stupid name _—_ so she knows that mentally, she's not any younger or older than Brad or anyone else who got left behind.

And everyone who was disappeared, everyone who blipped, they've had it easy, she knows.

Better to be the one who does the leaving rather than the one left behind.

As a rule.

And MJ herself was luckier than most.

When she'd disappeared, she knows now, the rest of her immediate family blipped out, too.

So there were no grieving parents, no abandoned siblings or desperate relatives.

Not like some of the other kids.

Betty's mom and dad lived through the Blip, and MJ sees their faces, each time they arrive to pick Betty up after school.

Betty rolls her eyes and grumbles about how she's sixteen, _Mom,_ she's old enough to walk to the station by herself, really, it's _fine—_

But MJ knows she doesn't really hate it.

There's a strange sort of guilt that hangs around the people who blipped _—_ the children, especially, more than anyone else _—_ like it's somehow _their_ fault that they left their parents, left their little brothers and sisters, left their friends _—_

So MJ's lucky, she knows.

It could have been a whole lot worse.

And honestly, she's doing a pretty good job dealing with it, she thinks.

There are new people in her class, and that's odd, and the people who used to be her classmates are now well into college, and that's odd, too.

Liz is just starting med school.

She ended up graduating top of her class at Stanford.

Of course she did.

They always knew she was going places.

And the rest of them are just sort of _—_ there.

Going to classes, taking standardized tests, spinning their wheels and grumbling about how unfair it is that they have to start the school year over again.

It's all very normal.

MJ's coping, she thinks.

Really, she is.

But it's just weird, because she was only very vaguely aware of Brad as some kid who hung around Jason's little brother and who got a bloody nose during an all-school assembly that one time _—_

And now he's in her grade—in her class—in a lot of her classes, apparently, and it's a whole thing.

"He got cute," Betty says. "Did you notice?"

Of course MJ noticed.

_Everyone_ noticed.

"Things change," she says, because she is absolutely not going to confirm or deny this particular train of thought. "Did you hear about Mr. Harrington's wife?"

"Oh my god, _right?_ " Betty hisses, and the subject shifts easily into something else.

Brad sits next to her in AP world, and he's very polite and very friendly, and MJ knows it's awful, but she kind of wishes that he'd go and be very polite and very friendly somewhere else.

When the teacher hands back their latest essay, he makes a face at his grade before showing it to her, and MJ hums sympathetically, because a B+ is probably the most frustrating grade in the history of anything.

Like, if the paper was that good, couldn't they find an extra point _somewhere_ to bump it up to an A-?

"Sucks," she says, because people generally don't come to her for comfort, so she can't be blamed for not being great at it. "Maybe work on your conclusion paragraph."

Constructive criticism, that she can do.

And really, from what little conversation she's had with Brad in the past, he's not a bad writer, so with a little more work, she figures, he could probably be pretty good.

Brad nods, agreeable as always.

"Got any advice?" he asks.

MJ takes his paper and flips through it.

"Run-on sentences," she says, and he rolls his eyes.

"I'm making it more dramatic," he says.

"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself," MJ says, instead of answering, because _really, it's history, how much more dramatic do you want it to be?_

Brad grins.

"Robert Kennedy," he says, like she didn't know that before she spoke.

"Right," she says, and hands the paper back. "But yeah, Ms. Evans has a thing about sentence length, so, you know. Might want to shorten that up."

"Thanks for the tip," he says, and sounds like he means it.

"No problem."

Brad scratches a few notes in the margin of his paper while MJ reads back over her own essay, and then, all at once, he blurts—

"What was it like?"

She doesn't have to ask what he means.

It's not that she doesn't like him.

It's just that it all feels so weird.

"I don't know," she says. "I don't remember a thing."

She lies.

Of course she lies.

Through some unspoken agreement, most of them, they lie about it.

On the news the other day, MJ watched as some doctor talked for a while about how most of the people who blipped away, they've probably repressed the memory, and that's to be expected.

He'd gone on and on about how things like the Blip, they were huge and difficult to deal with mentally, and so it was all perfectly normal, and really, no one should push their loved ones too hard about what they remember, it's all perfectly fine.

MJ remembers.

Not all of it.

But she remembers the awful tugging in her gut, the moment when everything turned to sand and dust, the moment when she was weightless, and then one moment of blind, unthinking, _pain—_

And then nothing.

And then— _snap—_ she was back to normal, along with everyone else.

Like she'd only just blinked.

Like nothing had ever happened.

She remembers.

But it's _hers_ to remember.

It's her memory to hold on to, not some doctor's, not some shrink's, and certainly not Brad-who-used-to-be-five-years-younger's.

The people who left family behind, they tend to be the more taciturn out of the whole of them.

Or they find ways of talking around it.

Even Flash, with his god-awful videos, gives a special edition rant about how it felt like flying, and about how he knew that Spider-Man was going to save them all, and how the Avengers must have always had it under control—

But his eyes dart up and to the right as he speaks into the camera, and the number one comment on his video is from _SnapTruth2k16,_ and all it says is _ur lying._

It's a very polite agreement, MJ thinks.

They've all agreed to carry this in silence.

Brad watches her face, and MJ raises an eyebrow, because she's one heck of a lot better at lying than Flash ever was, and he looks away again.

"Right," he says, all nervous and embarrassed. "Right, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—it's none of my business."

"Come on," MJ says, because she's not completely heartless. "If everyone minded their own business, no one would ever have any fun."

He sneaks a look across at her, like he thinks she might be kidding, and she narrows her eyes, just to really freak him out.

For one second, he looks appropriately worried.

Then he laughs, and it's easy to see the little kid he was five years.

"Okay," he says, surrendering. "Alright, okay, so going back to history—"

"Aren't we always?"

"—any chance I could get some help on the next essay?"

And so then it's a _thing,_ MJ guesses.

Brad hangs around with her and Betty, whenever they meet up to study for AP World, and it's not the same as having Cindy around ( _Columbia University, junior year_ ), but it's alright.

It's perfectly fine.

(It's not that she doesn't like him, it's just that it all feels so weird—)

That's the only reason.

Really, it is.

And Brad really does take the hint, because he doesn't ask about it again, and it's fine, it's all totally fine, she's dealing with everything, everything's _fine—_

One day, she's leaving school a little late, and she decides to cut through one of the hallways, because it's roughly a billion degrees outside, and anywhere with air conditioner is definitely the lesser of two evils.

She doesn't go down this hallway too often, and so it's kind of fun, in the way that exploring vaguely familiar places is always sort of halfheartedly fun—

There's a poster on the door.

_LOST DOG,_ it says, in blocky letters. _NAME: PEANUT._

There's a picture of a puppy underneath, with a panting mouth that looks like a smile and feet too big for its body.

_(last known photo),_ reads the line beneath the picture, and then, _AGE: FIVE YEARS._

_Oh,_ MJ thinks.

_Oh._

It's stupid, it really is.

She's okay, and so is everyone who blipped away, and her family is alright, and the world is just starting to get back on its axis—

But she stands there in front of the poster with her arms full of books that she didn't want to waste time dropping off at her locker, and it's so stupid, getting choked up over a dog—

"Are you okay?"

" _Holy—"_ MJ nearly throws her books halfway down the hallway, and then manages to recover just in time and glares over her shoulder—

It's Peter Parker.

"Where did you come from?" she demands, because she's reasonably certain that the hallway was empty as of fifteen seconds ago.

It's distinctly possible that she's been standing in front of the poster for longer than she cares to admit.

To his credit, Parker doesn't laugh at her.

But his mouth looks suspiciously thin, so MJ narrows her eyes at him, just to be safe.

"It's a hallway," he says, innocent as anything. "People do tend to walk in them."

"That's what they want you to think," MJ says.

"Who's they?"

"You know," she says, and juggles her books in one arm to wave a hand at the surrounding school buildings. " _Them._ "

"Oh, right." Parker rolls his eyes obligingly, but then steals another look over at her and almost—almost—frowns.

"You sure you're okay?"

MJ definitely doesn't look back at the poster.

"I'm fine," she says, and wills it to be true. "Why wouldn't I be fine?"

"I don't know," Parker says carefully. "I mean, you _are_ standing and staring at the door, Blair-Witch style. It's a little disconcerting."

In spite of herself, MJ almost laughs.

Unfortunately, the noise gets stuck somewhere between her lungs and the lump in her throat, so it comes out as this weird, half-choked sound, and yeah, way to be cool about it, Jones, A+ all around.

Parker looks downright alarmed at her not-laugh, so MJ rolls her eyes in a vain attempt to stave off further questioning.

"I wasn't staring at the door," she grumbles, and then wishes she hadn't, because Parker cranes his neck a little to see past her.

"No?"

"No," she says, and wonders if it would be obvious if she just wrote this whole conversation off as a loss and bailed.

"What were you staring at?" Parker asks, and he's still pretty light about it, like he's waiting for her to make a joke about perception and the objectivity of vision or lack thereof—

"Nothing," she says, and again, very smooth, Jones.

She has a reputation to uphold.

She's MJ, which means she's sarcastic, and she's obsessed with telling uncomfortable truths as long as they don't involve her, and she's just kind of prickly and awkward, and she definitely doesn't want to cry over a picture of some stupid dog named freaking _Peanut._

Parker isn't fooled for a second, because of course he isn't.

He moves—MJ isn't totally sure how it happens, but one second, she's in front of the poster, and the next second, she just _isn't_ , and Parker is, and she can see him getting ready to make some dumb joke before his brain catches up with him—

"Oh," he says.

"Yeah," MJ says, and hugs her books a little bit closer. "Oh."

For a second, Parker doesn't say anything, and MJ studies the ceiling tiles overhead and tries to swallow past the annoyingly persistent lump in her throat, and she definitely doesn't want to say anything, either.

Then, finally, in an impossibly small voice, Parker says, "Is it—"

MJ shakes her head before he can finish the sentence. "I don't know."

He nods, apparently thinking hard.

"If it blipped away—"

"Yeah."

"—it would've come back as a puppy."

"Yeah."

"Oh," Parker says again, and MJ can't think of anything good to say in response.

So she just says "Yeah", one more time, and hopes that it's enough.

For another interminable second, there is silence.

Then Parker says, "Is his name really Peanut?"

His voice is too wobbly, and MJ tears her eyes away from the ceiling, sees the way he's blinking too fast—

"Are you crying?" she demands.

Because, godammit, if Parker starts crying, she's going to start crying, too, and that is absolutely not fair—

"No," Parker says, and is very clearly lying. "Are you?"

"No," MJ snaps right back, and her voice breaks on the single syllable.

And she would press the issue, but Parker kind of sniffles, and it's just so pathetic that it's suddenly morbidly funny.

Like, for heaven's sake, they both _died_ , and everyone who blipped knows that everyone who blipped knows that they remember it, remember _dying—_

And she really was doing such a good job dealing with it, she really was—

Except now she's standing in an empty hallway with Peter Parker, of all people, and she's about to start sobbing her eyes out over what is probably the most cliche lost dog poster in the history of anything ever.

Part of her still wants to cry, because look at the dog's face, he's so little, and he must have been so scared—and part of her wants to laugh, because she's very much aware of how stupidly inconsequential this is, in the grand scheme of things, and the combined result of the two is that it's three forty-seven on a Tuesday afternoon, and she's standing there and hiccuping and trying to remember how to breathe like a normal person.

She'd feel worse about it if Parker weren't doing the exact same thing.

That's the thought that finally tips the scales, and she laughs out loud, even as her face feels all gross and puffy and red—

Parker grins, too, and he looks just about as much a wreck as she feels.

"Great," he says, still all high-pitched and wobbly. "We're both very mature, and neither of us is crying."

"Yep," MJ sniffs. "Glad we settled that."

"Good talk."

"Uh-huh."

"See you at AcaDec?"

"Yep," she says, and decides to bail while she's still vaguely in possession of her dignity. "See you tomorrow."

Parker doesn't say anything about it, at AcaDec practice.

In theory, this could be for a lot of reasons—maybe he knows not to push his luck, or maybe he doesn't want to explain why he was wandering the halls without his backpack, or maybe he's just as embarrassed as she is by the unbearable fallibility of having human emotions—

Mostly, though, it's because he doesn't actually show up for AcaDec practice.

"What else is new?" Flash grumbles, and MJ glares at him on principle.

"I'll get him his notes," Ned promises, as per usual, looking hunted, as per usual. "He had to—go. Run errands for. His aunt."

(Susie looks _deeply_ suspicious behind her buzzer, and MJ makes a mental note to check in later and see how the other girl's male escort theory is holding up.)

But Parker doesn't show up, which isn't super out of the ordinary.

"It's just a little frustrating," Brad says as they're breaking down the buzzers after practice. "Not knowing you can count on your team, you know?"

_Right,_ MJ thinks.

_And then there's that._

Because here's the thing: Peter Parker is Spider-Man.

She's one hundred percent sure.

Well, alright, ninety percent sure.

Maybe seventy percent.

No less than sixty percent, though, and that's definite.

"Don't worry," she says out loud. "I'm sure Parker will show up when he needs to."

Brad doesn't look so sure.

"He wasn't there in DC," he says. "When you guys needed him. When you won the championship."

That sixty percent certainty's a real pain, MJ thinks, because there's a forty percent chance that Brad is totally right, that Peter Parker just bailed on them, just like he's bailing on them now, for no real reason—

But that other sixty percent—

MJ isn't really a gambling type of person.

But she still thinks the odds are pretty good.

_He was there,_ she thinks about saying, but it'd just be too unbelievably cheesy. _When we really needed him. I think he was there._

"We'll see," she says instead, and it's about as noncommittal as she can manage to be.

Parker's in class the next day, full of apologies and excuses that manage to contradict literally every explanation Ned gave, and MJ wonders why she's always the only one who ever seems to notice it.

He still doesn't mention anything about the Peanut Incident.

MJ's pretty okay with that.

And everything continues to be very much the new normal, which is fine, MJ guesses, and she goes to her regular classes and draws and then goes to her art classes and reads, which is pretty par for the course, these days.

And then some things change.

Two things, to be exact.

Or perhaps one very big thing.

It's so hard to tell, these days.

The first thing that happens is this: the dog poster disappears.

MJ feels it like a punch to the gut.

It wasn't like she was actively looking for it, but whenever she was that way, she found herself just sort of—glancing in the general direction of that door.

And now it's gone.

It shouldn't feel as final as it does.

For a few thoughtless moments, she toys with the idea of going and finding Parker, saying something like, _did you see they took the poster down?_

But there wouldn't be much of a point.

And really, MJ thinks, what would she be expecting him to do?

Even if he _is_ Spider-Man—and she thinks she can maybe argue her way up to a sixty-three percent by now, but _still_ —even if he is Spider-Man, what's she expecting him to do about it?

It's not like Spider-Man has time to waste looking for lost dogs.

The second thing that happens is this: Spider-Man apparently has time to waste looking for lost dogs.

It takes a little more time for this second thing to come to light, but mostly MJ figures she can chalk that one up to their whole school being filled with just awful littl egremlins to begin with.

Because someone takes the poster down, and two days later, there's a post-it note stuck to the door where it used to be.

The post-it note says _NOOOOOOOOOO PEANUT_ in bright red Sharpie letters.

The next day, someone's added _rip_ in black ink, and someone else has added _gone but not forgotten._

It's not funny at all, except for the fact that it maybe is just a little bit funny, in a dark way, and MJ takes a picture with her phone and figures that that'll be the end of it.

It isn't.

Of course it isn't.

The whole thing starts with one post-it note, and then it just sort of escalates from there.

By the end of the week, the whole school is well on its way to building a full-blown shrine, which, again, is simultaneously kind of funny and also not funny at all.

On Friday, someone tapes up a picture of a generic dog with Tony Stark's facial hair and labels it _RIP IN PEACE,_ and someone else writes, _Earth's Mightiest Heroes: the peanut Saga,_ and that's around the time it all starts making a little more sense.

That doctor on the morning talk show would probably say that it's projection, that this entire generation—the missing generation, the people who blinked, and then woke up out of step with the rest of the world—that they're finding ways to perform the rituals of grief while still affecting jocularity and perfect recovery—

MJ takes a picture of the newest addition, thinks that if anyone actually lights the candles people have started leaving, they're going to get yelled at in assembly for the rest of their lives, and thinks that the doctor would probably be right.

At any rate, they get yelled at in assembly anyhow.

Any doubts as to on which side of the funny/not funny debate the school faculty lies is resolved by the next Tuesday morning, when the intercom crackles to life and tells them all that they need to be in the gym in the next ten minutes.

"This is Not Funny," Principal Morita informs them, in the same voice he used last year to tell them that they were supposed to be extraordinarily clever students, and anyone caught even _looking_ at a Tide Pod with culinary intentions would be on bread and water until they were old enough to vote.

Last year— _no, five years ago._

"It's not funny," Mr. Dell says in Physics, immediately after, like he's worried they weren't actually paying attention.

That's fair, MJ supposes. She knows she wasn't.

"If any of you need to work through your grieving process, we have counselors for that," their physics teacher continues. "You don't build shrines to dead dogs. That's just messed up."

"We don't _know_ he's dead," Ned offers weakly, but it's quiet enough that no one really hears him.

The next day, the shrine is gone.

_Well,_ MJ thinks. _That's to be expected._

And the day after that, there's a single picture taped to the door.

It's not a great-quality picture, and it's very clearly something that was printed on regular paper off someone's phone, but Betty grabs MJ as soon as first period ends and demands, "Did you see the Peanut Picture?"

"Is that what we're calling it?" MJ can't help but ask. "Like, is that actually a thing that we all agreed to say out loud with our mouths?"

Then she realizes what Betty's asking, and she frowns.

"Wait, what picture?"

The dog in the picture is older.

A little older, maybe a little bit more ragged-looking—but clean, and alive, and wagging his little stump of a tail so hard that it's nothing but a blur in the picture.

The girl holding the dog looks vaguely familiar, so that MJ figures she's probably a freshman who blipped away, and she's smiling from ear to ear, holding the camera out away from herself so that it can capture her face, Peanut the dog, and the bright red and black mask of everyone's favorite neighborhood superhero.

_Huh,_ MJ thinks.

"It could just be a random dog," Brad points out during study hall. "I mean, it's a white dog with a black spot, I feel like those would be easy enough to find, right?"

"You think Spider-Man would just lie about that?" Flash demands. "Look, if Spider-Man says it's the same dog, you don't think he'd have done his research first?"

Brad looks doubtful.

"Either way," Betty says. "It's a sweet gesture."

"It's the same dog," Flash says, stubborn. "It has to be."

MJ glances to the other side of the classroom, where Parker is staring at his textbook like it holds all the answers to the universe.

If she looks very closely, she thinks, he may be trying not to smile.

As if he can feel her gaze, he glances up, meets her eye—

MJ almost looks away, but then she doesn't, and she does her best to give what she hopes is an _okay, well done, you_ kind of smile.

Parker blinks.

Then he beams right back, and the little counter in the back of MJ's mind ticks from sixty-three to somewhere around sixty-five.

Nothing's conclusive.

But still.

The conversation eventually shifts away from the triumphant return of Peanut the Ambiguously-Pedigreed, and Betty is ready to rant to anyone who will listen about how supremely unfair it is that they're being expected to retake their tests like nothing ever happened.

"I mean, we already know the subjects," she seethes. "Any test results we get aren't going to be an actually accurate reflection of what we know, right?"

"Hmm," MJ says.

"And that's going to skew our whole class average, which means that those of us who actually studied the first time around are going to look worse by comparison."

"Right."

"God," Betty huffs, and tosses her pen back down onto the table as she leans back in disgust. "I'm so ready for this year to be over."

"Hmm," MJ says, just on reflex.

Then she realizes that she actually has an opinion to offer on that note and picks up Betty's pen from where it's rolled over to her side of the table.

"At least we won't have to worry about qualifying for student trips," she says.

It's a deliberately leading statement, and Betty pounces eagerly.

"Did you hear Mr. Harrington's chaperoning a trip to Europe?" she asks.

"I hear all," MJ says, as dry as possible, and Betty rolls her eyes.

"Right, I forgot."

"I forget nothing."

Betty opens her mouth, probably to remind MJ that last week at AcaDec practice, she said that _Rime of the Ancient Mariner_ was by Housman instead of Coleridge, which is, admittedly, a pretty rookie mistake.

" _Nothing,"_ MJ says anyways, and Betty looks very smug.

"Of course," she says.

But she goes back to the trip in question almost immediately, and MJ can literally watch as the other girl starts to imagine a week or so utterly free of parental supervision in Europe.

"Could be kind of fun," she says, in an overly casual kind of tone, and MJ can't disagree.

" _Could_ be," Brad says, in a tone that makes it pretty clear that he can and probably does disagree.

And MJ's not nearly as pessimistic as people seem to think—not always, anyhow.

She may or may not have already read up on the itinerary, googled the places they're planning to go, she thinks it might not be awful, as far as school trips go.

"I think it sounds cool," she admits.

"Yeah, me too," Brad says immediately.

MJ and Betty trade a look, but the other girl is merciful enough to let it slide.

It's not that she doesn't like Brad.

It's just weird.

That's all it is.

No other reasons.

When the bell rings, she lets herself drift closer to Ned and Parker, where they're talking fast and quiet in the back of the crowd that heads for the door.

"Thing One and Thing Two," she says, by way of greeting.

"Are you Thing One?" Ned asks Parker, without missing a beat. "Am I Thing Two? Is it vice versa? I feel like it's never vice versa."

Parker shrugs. "Do you want to be Thing One?"

"I never get to be Thing One."

"Today's your day, Ned. Achieve your dreams."

MJ waits.

"Be the Thing One you were always meant to be."

"Are you done?" MJ asks.

"Maybe the real Thing One was inside us all along," Ned says, and nods slowly in mock contemplation before shrugging. "Yeah, we're done."

MJ definitely doesn't smile, because that would mean that she was condoning this foolishness, which she definitely is not.

Instead, she says, "You guys sign up for the Europe trip?"

Ned and Parker trade a look that she doesn't fully understand.

"I don't know," Parker says, after a moment of silent conversation that leaves MJ feeling a little third-wheel-ish. "It depends."

She thinks about it. "On what?"

"Oh, you know—" He glances at Ned, who gives the tiniest little motion that could be a head shake or could be another shrug. "On whether I finish everything—here. Errands, and stuff like that."

"Errands," MJ echoes. "For your aunt."

"Right!" Ned blurts, before Parker can blunder his way into another excuse. "May's really glad to have him around, you know, especially with all of the...stuff. That happens. Here."

"Stuff," she repeats, and doesn't even try to hide her skepticism.

"Yeah," Parker says weakly. "Stuff."

The little percentage counter is hovering somewhere around sixty-six by now.

Possibly even sixty-seven.

"Huh," MJ says out loud, because explaining the little percentage counter might actually make Parker pass out on the spot. "You guys should sign up. It'll be cool."

_Coward,_ says the voice in the back of her head that's really starting to sound a little bit like mid-rant Betty.

_Yeah,_ she thinks. _Deal with it._

For a second, Parker looks stunned, like the idea of Midtown's resident cryptid thinking any school-sanctioned event could be cool is just too much to fathom.

Then he grins, bright and cheerful, and somehow manages to make it look like it was what he meant to do all along.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, it probably will."

MJ nods. "But if you're too busy with _stuff—"_

"He's not," Ned promises. "He's really, really not."

"Cool," MJ says, and then wishes she had something to do with her hands other than fiddle with the straps on her bag. "See you dorks later, I guess."

It's a dumb thing to say.

She has, like, three more classes with the both of them, of course she'll see them later.

But Parker bobs his head, still grinning like a child, hanging onto his own backpack with both hands.

"Right," he says. "Right, yeah, I guess."

"A whole _week_ in Europe," Betty says later. "Just think of the possibilities, MJ. It's going to be _amazing._ You _have_ signed up already, haven't you?"

She hasn't, actually.

Not officially, not yet.

But she's got the form in one of her binders, and she's already downloaded a lot of the paperwork to print after school, and she doesn't think she'll have to work too hard to make the case to her parents—

"Amazing," she echoes, and Betty beams, reassured. "It sounds like fun."

A whole week in Europe—

Sixty-seven percent—

She's got a really, really good feeling about this one.


End file.
